


(There's a) Half moon rising in southeastern skies

by aesthete_laureate



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Basically me belting my headcanons into the void like an aging opera singer, Depersonalization, Dissociation, Drowning, I say unreliable narrator but he's actually pretty reliable, Inspired by canon but not actually canon-compliant, Internalized Homophobia, Lots of slices of life coming together to make the eventual pie, Memory Loss, Memory regain, Multi, Oral Sex, POV Second Person, Past use of the memory gun, Religious Guilt, Unreliable Narrator, like really bad depersonalization, listen, tw death of a child
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-25 21:01:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30095064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesthete_laureate/pseuds/aesthete_laureate
Summary: A series of memories, all compiled in convenient cinema-reel format. It’s all here, folks, the good, the bad, the sexy, the emotionally distressing. Next to nothing left out.
Relationships: Fiddleford H. McGucket/Ford Pines, Fiddleford H. McGucket/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this will come as a shock to no one but the POV here is, you guessed it, Fiddleford Hadron McGucket. Also disclaimer - this is an AU. As in I'm projecting. Not Canon Compliant, case in point: my version of his wife. 
> 
> Also, I'm shocked and appalled that Tate is a nickname for Potato, I simply could not do it to the lad

-

The memories play out on the screen, and you’ve heard about when sometimes, it feels like someone’s watching their life go on from somewhere outside their body - dissociation, something tired pipes up somewhere in your mind, something that had been dormant for far, far too long. 

This, though, probably isn’t what any of those people were talking about. 

It’s not anything like the dizzying rush that comes with the realization that your body is doing something you didn’t tell it to, no, it’s like looking at a complete stranger.

Except you recognize this stranger. 

Recognize the narrow span of his shoulders and the soft curve of his jaw. You know exactly where under his long-sleeved shirt the faint lines still mark his skin, how partway down the upper arm milky pale turns just slightly darker, but not as dark as it would have been when he was younger. 

The tan lines fade over time, yes, but not as quickly as a lot of people think. 

Not when you know he spent most of his youth outside and under the sun, getting bowled over by hulking livestock and trying to fit jagged pieces of rusting sheet metal together and clearing out the well in the front yard just as quickly as the dust and leaves fell into it.

You recognize him from the mirror, years and years ago.

He lifts his hand and runs his fingers through dark blond hair, and it sticks up wildly for a half a second before flopping back down over his forehead - his face is smooth and pale and young, too young for him to look as anxious as he does. 

Your hand lifts too, subconsciously trying to mirror his movement, and your eyes sting when it meets nothing, but you keep your gaze trained on the figure taking up the flickering screen in front of you.

He’s talking, and his voice is smooth and youthful, fitting fluidly around complex syllable structures and cradling their vowels lovingly in his mouth, easing into them with a grace you couldn’t replicate these days if you tried.

“It worked,” he positively glows, beaming smile making his eyes scrunch up a little, “I can’t remember a thing.”

And then the image shakes, warps, and there’s a pained grimace on his face for the briefest of moments, his brow furrowed and his teeth bared in a hiss, arms wound tight around his own middle. 

That image is the one that sticks, you can see the lasting imprint of it on the dark screen until eventually a new picture comes up.

It’s.. vague. 

Colors and shapes, sense memories of being smaller and yet somehow less afraid: red square for a house, blue mass for sky, green rolling hills as far as you can see.

You look up, along the length of your sun-browned arm, and your little hand is clasped in a bigger one, and past that warm point of contact there’s the nebulous shape of another person. 

Slowly, like tuning an old television, details come into focus. 

First the rough texture of the hand around yours, then the freckles on the tanned forearm, and then the sleeve of the blue cotton shirt, with its dainty button closure at the hem just above the elbow. 

Past that, if you squint, you can see through the swimming layers of years, and distance, and mistakes mistakes mistakes, that she had dark hair that curled up at the ends just above her shoulders, and a splash of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and the same warm brown eyes you saw on the young man from the mirror.

Mother, your mind tells you. 

Another part of your brain, less preoccupied with technicalities - a part you hadn’t heard from in a long, long time - whispers quietly: Ma. 

And when you were small like that, small enough to hide behind a fistful of her skirt when the neighbor’s dog spooked you or your older siblings were being mighty terrors: Mamma.

She blurs and vanishes before you can get your mouth around the full two syllables, and there’s a cold spike in your chest that brings the prick of tears back to your eyes. 

You don’t get to dwell on it for too long, though, because soon enough there’s a new picture. 

This one is darker, with deep shadows and a disorienting gray cast, and this time you’re surrounded by trees. 

The water in front of you isn’t still, but deep in your gut you know it should be - this isn’t a creek, it’s the pond behind the neighbor’s farm, and it’s not supposed to be moving water. 

But there are bubbles at the surface and something thrashing a few feet down, and your body is still small but not as small as it was in the previous memory - it’s still small enough for the rough shove past you to send you stumbling forward though, bare feet splashing into the shallow water at the edge of the pond. 

You freeze there, your heart pounding and your limbs shaking, and your mind is screaming at you to get out, get out of the water, but you’re stuck fast.

It was the neighbor's boy who pushed past you, you find out, because you can turn your head to watch him even though the rest of your body feels like it’s full of sand. He’s got his shirt off, is wading around a few yards from the edge, and is yelling like mad. 

His hands thrash around in the water, his voice starting to pitch up, to take on a hysterical note, and he ventures out further until the water is deep enough for him to duck under the surface. 

There’s a beat of stillness, then, and you stand there stock-still with your heartbeat roaring in your ears, until he surfaces with a gasp of breath. 

He’s dragging something with him toward the pond’s edge, and you get a glimpse of a white shirt soaked translucent, a pale, limp hand, tinged blue, and then your vision skews as you’re roughly grabbed from behind and pulled out of the shallows.

Your oldest brother’s voice is loud on your ears, and his hands are warm on your cheeks as he forces you to look at him, but you can feel yourself trying with all your might to turn and look at what it was the neighbor’s boy had dredged up from the water. 

Where was his younger brother, you think to yourself, wasn’t he supposed to be coming out to play today, too?

This time the memory fades and leaves you feeling a bit sick.

-

You stare at your reflection in the dark monitor of the computer and, try as you might, you can’t see the young man from before at all. 

The eyes are all wrong, drooping and dulled and old, and even the bittersweet smile you force onto your face looks like it belongs to a completely different person.

You have to take the cartridge out, it’s run its course, but luckily there’s a fair few more to go. The glass cylinder clinks gently against the tabletop when you set it down, the sound clear and bright, like its contents hadn’t just rent your already tenuous grip on your heart in two. 

The next one slides into place easily, and after a brief flicker of static, a new memory starts up.

-

“It was terrible,” he murmurs, gaze downcast as he stands in the study, cradling one splinted arm in front of his chest. 

“I looked into its eyes and I saw.. well, it was-” and he shudders, shakes his head as if trying to dislodge the memory, but forges on. 

“It wasn’t Caroline, not anymore. And it wasn’t the baby either, wasn’t nobody’s baby no more because it was drowned, like, and it- the thing made me think she did it. She got this smile on her face like-- And-and she wouldn’t, not ever, but I.. I don’t think I can keep goin’ on these, these outings with him any longer, I don’t,” he sighs, then, shoulders heaving with the weight of it, and even though you wish you didn’t, you instantly know the ‘him’ he’s talking about.

You reach out and push ‘rewind’, because the purpose of this exercise isn’t to relive things you already remember, it’s to recover some semblance of your past, your true identity. 

Not to unbury hatchets and dredge up old, silly nightmares.

The screen blurs and fuzzes again, and then it sharpens into a grayscale picture of a schoolhouse. 

It’s black around the edges, giving the image an old-fashioned, rounded shape, and inside the memory you’re sitting at a desk that feels much too high off the ground. 

Your feet kick in the air absently, and the girl sitting in front of you has her hair in two low pigtails, the shiny ribbons brushing across your desk surface as she raises her hand and answers the teacher’s question - her father works at the dairy.

You’re up next, and your voice is small as you recount the lines your mother had made you rehearse the night before, and again this morning over a bare breakfast of plain toast. 

Your last name is McGucket. 

You have two older brothers and an older sister. 

Your father is a farmer. 

Your heart is fluttering in your chest like a trapped bird, even as the teacher smiles and nods and moves on to the boy sitting behind you. 

That teacher is back when the screen flickers again, and this time both of your parents are here in the classroom with you. 

Your cheeks are flushed warm with embarrassment, but there’s a happy lightness in your head as the teacher - young, with blond hair and pretty green eyes, wearing a red and white checkered button-up shirt - tells them about your arithmetic scores. 

Ma hugs you afterward, outside the schoolhouse, and you grumble and push her away, but she murmurs soft praise into the top of your head, only pulls away once she’s pressed a loud, motherly smooch to your hair. 

Your father smiles in that quiet way of his, and he doesn’t say too much but he claps you on the shoulder lightly, and you feel pride swell in your chest.

Later that night, when your mother tucks you tightly into bed, you sit up and wind your arms around her waist, lean your head into her shoulder. 

She laughs lightly, petting your hair back from your face, and you whisper, “thanks, Mamma,” even though you’re too old to call her that now. 

“Of course, loveheart,” she hums, her fingers brushing gently over your cheek, and you fall asleep that night to thoughts of blueprints and electric circuitry.

Next, you’re a good deal older - your limbs awkwardly long and your blue denim pants a solid six inches too short, but your family doesn’t have the kind of money to keep up with your growth spurts, so you put up with it just fine. 

This time you’re at home, in the tool shed, surrounded by a mess of screwdrivers and Pa’s trusty red-handled spanner, the contraption in your lap shaking and spitting sparks intermittently. Your eyes are narrowed near shut behind the round lenses of your glasses for fear of blinding, and you have the fleeting thought that maybe you should invest in some sort of protective gear one of these days. 

The little mechanical piglet sputters out a cloud of dark gray steam before its engine finally engages and its eyes open, simple camera lenses whirring and contracting as it takes you in.

You grin, a rush of satisfaction coursing through you. 

Yes, this will do, you think. 

You won’t have to look after the little orphan shoats with a robotic nanny around to watch them for you, and that frees up your hands for more time spent tinkering in the shed. 

You wonder if you can get the next one to walk properly.

The screen goes black again, then fades in and this time the memory is in full color. The light of the late summer sun colors the land a warm gold, and you’re standing outside the neighbor’s barn. 

It’s a different neighbor, this time, the neighbor to the back. 

The one with the pretty daughter.

Hosanna, your mind tells you, Hosanna Connelly - she giggles and her slender hand reaches up to cover her mouth when she does, the sun catching in her red hair and making it seem to glow like a halo. 

You’re even taller than you were before but this time you’re confident in your stance, more in control of the placement of your hands and feet. 

You’re leaned up against the wooden fence and she’s right on the other side of it, and she’s probably talking to you but you can’t focus on that at all because her hand comes to rest on your arm, and for a minute your whole world narrows down to that point of contact.

She pulls you around the fence and into the barn and doesn’t bother to shut the door behind you. 

Sitting up in the hayloft, she tells you about how she had admired you from across the classroom for months, and watched you sometimes, after her morning chores, as you gathered scrap metal from around the property line. 

Your stomach feels pleasantly warm as she praises your creativity, your intelligence. You smile and blush, tell her thank you, but I’m really just fooling around making bits of nothing. 

She says she doesn’t believe you, that you’ll make something that hits the big time one of these days. 

Somehow during the conversation she’d taken your hand in hers, and that hand had ended up on the top of her thigh, the hem of her skirt pushed up and pooling around her hips.

She sighs happily, and leans up to press her pretty red mouth to yours, and you’re frozen for a second in shock before your eyes flutter shut and you lean into the kiss. 

The two of you end up tucked away behind a stack of hay, her body pressed underneath yours, and all you can think about is how warm she is, how soft her skin is under your calloused hands. 

Between increasingly heated kisses, your shirt becomes unbuttoned and her skirt gets pushed up all the way around her waist, and before you know it your pants are undone and her hand is wrapping around you, her soft pale thighs brushing over your sides as she guides you forward.

You only make it an embarrassingly brief amount of time, but you’re sure she enjoyed herself too. 

With your own release just barely finished, the giddy glow settling into your limbs slow and heavy, you watch curiously as she reaches down between your bodies. 

Her wrist moves in short, jerky motions for a moment, two, and then her face scrunches up and her body shudders beneath you, a small sound escaping her that might be the first syllable of your name, but it’s cut off by the sudden barking of a dog outside the barn.

She groans, then, disappointed, and pushes at your shoulder. 

You spring away from her, then look back sheepishly, doing up the front of your trousers. 

She sits up, skirt falling back down into place as if nothing had happened at all, and when you lean in to try and steal one last kiss she smiles brightly and pushes you away again, telling you to shoo before her father gets there. 

So you scramble down from the loft and over the dividing fence into your family’s yard, but the grin on your face doesn’t fade for at least through the end of the week.

-

Between playing the cartridge tapes on your (old, now, sad and outdated like the rest of you) computer, you try to go about life as normal. 

But the memories continue to flow even when you’re not looking at the screen, and they hit you at the oddest of times. 

It means your mind is getting stronger, yes, it means you’re recovering, but it’s still wildly disorienting. 

You eat a bowl of bland oatmeal and remember your sister, though her name escapes you, and how she used to wear dresses made from feed sack material. 

You wander a dark hallway at night and catch a glimpse of your reflection in a mirror in one of the grand bathrooms (there are so many grand rooms in this house, most of them you haven’t even looked at yet), and remember how your skin prickled with goosebumps in the ‘bath’ when you were a child. 

It wasn’t hardly a tub, some neighbors had tin watering troughs that they repurposed into two-in-one laundry and bathing basins, but your family were the sort who would have to cross the county line to find a nickel, and so you and your siblings made do once a week in the bottom half of a sawn-off wooden barrel with a linen sheet draped over it. 

The water would have been about an inch or two high, lukewarm and rapidly cooling as you poured it over yourself with Ma’s good pitcher from the kitchen. 

You’d been floored when you first encountered the dormitory showers in school.

You shake yourself a little, and it helps clear your head, but just barely. 

Today is an important day, you’re vaguely aware of it. 

The season is slowly but surely tipping into fall, summer heat being swept away by crisp early-morning winds and the vibrant green of the outdoors fading into jade, sage, olive tones. 

Sitting here at the stately dining table in the stately dining room alone had seemed like a good idea earlier that morning, but now that you’re there it makes you uneasy. 

You can’t help but tap your foot against the polished hardwood floor, your knee occasionally bumping into the underside of the table. It’s too big of a room, too empty, and as the atmosphere weighs on you, you start to feel the baffling urge to hide.

So you scoop up your tea pot and your observation notebook and scurry back to the kitchen. 

It’s warm from the stove and there’s a smaller round table tucked into one corner, which feels much more comfortable to sit at.

Halfway through the pot of tea, the realization hits you that of course today is an important day, you’re expecting a visitor. 

Heck, visitors, maybe, plural. 

You should put on your nice sweater and probably clear the coffee table in the downstairs sitting room.

You’re in the process of stacking papers on the floor, organizing what had been a pile of half-drawn blueprints and scrawlings of random memory tidbits into cohesive piles, when acute nervousness suddenly blooms to life in the pit of your stomach. 

What will he think of you?

It’s a silly thought, and you try to banish it from your head, but it sticks like a fly on honey paper.

You’re a far cry from the man he hired on for his project, and look at him now.

You swallow hard, then shake your head with a tiny smile. The years would do any number of things to any number of people, everyone knows that. He’ll not think lesser of you for the downward slope you got yourself stuck in, especially not now that you’re doing so much better.

Would he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ssooooo this was kind of inspired by the work Soul Sick by sylvanwhispers. it’s not based on their work by any means, but that story is a good read


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah I am just Pretending I Did Not See the canon wife's name, I'm sticking with Caroline. The baby's name is still fucking Potato though smh.
> 
> This one is more flashback-heavy.

Company isn’t due until evening, so after breakfast you sit yourself down at the desk in your study and switch the computer monitor on. 

Tape three, now, you’re whizzing on through them. It seems like the childhood part is probably over, now, and you still crack a smile like an absolute loon at the memory that defined your transition from adolescence to adulthood proper.

There’s a faint electronic whine, and then the screen flickers on again.

-

The young man from before is back, the one you know inside and out. He looks different now though, harrowed, a gaunt look to his features that, up until now, had been shrewdly intelligent and flush with youth.

“She’s stopped pickin’ up the phone,” he says, the sound of his voice rougher than it had been earlier,

“I thought I might just drive down and see her, but I, hah, I forgot my car’s impounded.” His expression tightens, then, the manic smile turning into just barely concealed panic. You watch, spellbound, and you can pinpoint the exact moment his eyes become just slightly duller, some spark within them snuffing out. 

When he draws his hand away from the side of his head, a few strands of hair come away with it.

The picture shakes, then, reshapes, and when it comes back into focus you’re home on the farm, spring light filtering gentle and butter-yellow through the leaves.

It’s your eighteenth birthday, and you’re wearing a new shirt gifted to you by your parents - it’s new-fashioned, bless them, with wide lapels and a swirling pattern of green and white, and it fits in both the waist and the sleeves thanks to your mother. 

The manila envelope is heavy in your hands, and you open it with shaking fingers, nearly balking at the expensive feeling of the fancy paper enclosed.

Before the paper is even fully out of the envelope, your middle brother gives an excited whoop, the family having gathered around behind you at the mailbox down at the edge of the property before the mail truck was even on its way to the next house.

You stare uncomprehendingly at the graceful lines of the writing, the words not quite registering yet, but you know what it means by the way your sister nearly tackles you with a tight hug, and someone pats you on the back, another hand vigorously tousling your hair. You laugh incredulously, clutching the letter to your chest.

You’re going to study at a University.

The memory fades like an old film ending, and then brightens again to reveal the bare cinder-block walls and dubiously-clean carpeting that made up your dormitory room. 

A pen is already in your hand as you sit at the desk provided to you, the end of it tapping rhythmically against the surface as you try to think of one final, big goal to end your little ‘do by the end of the year’ list. After a few minutes of deliberation, you write ‘have fun!’, and chuckle a little to yourself at the cop-out.

You stretch over to grab your faithful banjo out of its case, leaning it carefully against the wall. 

Pride of placement. This way you won’t lose track of it, or have any excuse to ignore it for too long. 

You’d brought a couple of records with you too, of course, a little piece of the sound of home, but nothing beats creating things with your own two hands - music included.

The dorm room door squeaks open, then, and you glance over at the sound. 

Right. Roommate. 

It’s a boy about your height, but probably twice as broad across, and he’s got wavy dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He’s got a look on his face like someone spat in his cornflakes and he sighs heavily as he sets his suitcase down on the empty, unclaimed side of the tiny room.

You jump up out of your chair and go over to him, holding out one hand with an easy smile, and you offer to help with the rucksack he’s got in his other hand. 

“No,” he says, his voice curt, “thank you”. 

You shrug, running your fingers through your hair instead, and then go in for a handshake, which he accepts.

His frown falters when you tell him your name, his tone noticeably brighter when he gives you his in turn - and it’s a nice sounding name. 

Stanford. Sturdy. Nice and strong. 

You nod when he asks if you’re here for the science program too, and while your gaze is directed down you notice just why his hand feels just a bit out of the ordinary in yours. Maybe you stare for a second too long, because he starts to fidget and pulls away from you, but you just flash him another grin and tell him, honestly, “it’s real nice to meet you”. 

Slowly, he returns the tiniest little smile, shoulders relaxing from where they’d become hunched defensively, and you feel something warm flutter to life in your chest.

Next, it’s another bright spring day, and you’re sitting beside him in the front row of the auditorium. 

He’s in seat number one, valedictorian, and you’re in seat number two. Salutatorian. 

You couldn’t be more proud. 

There’s a slew of long speeches, and Stanford’s just might drag on the longest, putting the dry, stuffy professors to shame with his carefully-detached reflection on his experience in higher education.

His name is called, and you pat him on the back as he walks past you. 

The glance he throws at you over his shoulder, the near-imperceptible quirk of his lips, is the thing that makes your palms sweat, funnily enough. Not the thrill of graduating in itself. 

The paper your degree is printed on feels exactly like the acceptance letter you’d gotten years ago did - it’s heavy, and probably not as expensive as its texture makes you believe.

Afterward, your family insists on taking a photo of the two of you, so you let him sling one solid arm over your shoulders and tilt your head to the side, and in the split second just after the flash goes off, your eyes meet his and you feel a pang go through you. 

His family stands stiffly off to one side, his father looking bored and his mother smiling tightly. A little boy who can’t be more than about four has his arms wrapped around her leg.

“You never mentioned you had a little brother,” you comment jokingly, giving a nod of acknowledgement to the boy, who reddens and turns to tuck his face into their mother’s skirt.

Stanford stutters, exchanges a glance with his mother, and clears his throat, turning to face you. “I.. this is Sherman.”

You say hello, but Sherman isn’t interested. And of course he’s not, he’s four, and he’s in a strange building in a strange state, and he’s probably up way past his bedtime to boot. 

Your family wants to take the Pineses out to dinner, but they don’t bite. Stanford has to drive his parents to the airport, and then he’s heading out west to start up the research project he’d been dreaming up for months. 

On his way out the auditorium door, you slip the polaroid of the two of you into his hand, and you watch until it gets tucked safely into his coat pocket. There’s a hastily written note on the back of it, messier than your handwriting usually is: 

“May 1976. Be safe out there, city boy. - F”.

-

Some of the cartridges are shattered.

You’d kept them all, over the years, all except one, and you’d recovered that first one over the summer. In the bottom of the burlap sack, though, there are glass shards, and fraying remnants of the tape-like material the information is recorded on.

But even if that makes your eyes sting and your throat feel tight, you have more important things to focus on until you’re through reviewing the footage you do have.

Fishing around in the bag is getting increasingly risky with the broken glass inside, and you slice one of your fingers open against a jagged edge. You hiss, drawing that finger into your mouth reflexively, and then look down to examine the damage.

You’ve definitely had worse.

You can keep going, so you do - the cartridge clicks gently into place, and tuning static appears on the screen once more.

-

The plan is to move to California, you have a house already placed under your name for rent just outside of Palo Alto, Silicon Valley. 

First, though, you find yourself back home in nowhereville, Tennessee, sat at the tiny kitchen table in your childhood home. Your sister sits across from you, Ma puttering around between the back door and the wood stove somewhere in your periphery.

She looks tired, your sister. Her light-brown almost-blond hair is swept back from her already slightly sun-weathered face in a low chignon, her chapped, reddened hands encircling a small tin cup of tea. She shifts uncomfortably in her chair from time to time, no doubt from the heavy way her stomach swells with your newest impending niece or nephew. But nonetheless, she smiles.

You’re sure you want to go all that way, she asks you, and you nod solemnly. 

You can’t quite recall her voice, so in the memory her lips move soundlessly, and their meaning comes up in your mind like subtitling.

There’s a look in her eye like longing, when she looks you up and down appraisingly, but she just nods back after a moment’s pause.

I’ll come to visit, she declares, and you tell her you’ll keep a spare room open for when she does. 

That seems to placate her for the time being, but when she stands up to leave for her own house half a mile down the road, for her life and her husband and her responsibilities, she moves like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. You jump up to help her, of course, and when her dark coffee-brown eyes meet your light honey-brown ones, you suddenly have the dawning realization that, no, she’ll never come to visit. 

The California sun is too bright when the next memory skips to life, and it feels somehow too direct as well, as if there’s nothing in the atmosphere between its rays and your skin. 

Just thirty minutes in the sun that day had turned your forearms and cheeks and the back of your neck bright pink - at least you know it’ll fade, and not peel.

Not that that matters, compared to the big news of the day: you’d gotten the job. You’re officially a software developer at one of the most forward-thinking fledgeling tech companies in Silicon Valley. And tonight, you’re going to hit the bars, because your little team of coworkers had invited you - you’re the new guy, so you couldn’t say no. And besides, you’d like to get out, see the town, meet some people.

The image freezes, one second you’re watching your shoes hit the heat-shiny asphalt of downtown, and the next you’re seated at a nondescript, sticky bar with a glass of Jack Daniels in front of you - a joke, ordered for you by your supervisor.

(Within the picture, a smaller window pops up, a flashback within a flashback, and you see the vague outline of your boss’s silhouette. “Where’s that accent from?” he laughs, and you tell him. “Well,” he says, still way too amused, “I hope you can keep up.”)

Back at the bar, the conversation going on around you just sounds like mumbling and general noise. All you can see is amber liquid swirling around agitatedly, the faceted bottom of your drink glass - you’re staring at it in your hand, unable to feel even remotely included in the night out at all.

He didn’t mean anything by it. And anyway, you actually like whiskey. Pa used to have it in his tea instead of milk, and once you’d tried that, you’d taken to it pretty quickly too.

(That faceless boss comes up again like an annoying pop-up window - he’d been Italian, had clinked his glass against some nameless coworker’s and said “Saluté,” which had sounded jarringly odd, your lips already forming around a “Slàinte”.)

At some point during the night, you manage to drag your gaze up from the depths of your drink, and when you do you meet the eye of a comely stranger. She’s next to a couple of other women who are sitting down at the other end of the bar, a hen night by the looks of it. One of them is noticeably more tipsy than the rest, and she’s dressed in white, but you’re not looking at her. 

Not at all.

That memory ends there, but the next one comes up quick, before you have time to register the shift.

You’ve been waiting to meet Caroline, having heard her name here and there from the young man you once were. And hell in a handbasket, was the wait to see her again sure worth it.

She’s got thick dark hair that follows a fetching wave pattern, smooth pale skin and striking blue eyes like something out of a fairy tale. There’s a bright smile on her red-painted lips. 

(Wavy dark hair and blue eyes - something sparks in your brain somewhere like a crossed wire.)

You’re sitting down in what you think is the living room, and she’s there too, leaning her elbows down against the coffee table pulled up right in front of you. She nods along as you explain what the marks and arrows mean on your latest blueprint sketch. 

“I’ll never understand how you do it”, she says warmly. Her laugh is like the sun sparkling off the California waves, and you find yourself dazzled by it in very much the same way.

Another dizzying transition hits out of nowhere, and suddenly you’re outside again, your oldest brother in front of you. 

He takes up most of your field of vision, and you feel an overwhelming sense of deja vu as you look at him. You’re taller than he is, now, and his hands are work-roughened in a way yours aren’t, scratching against the fabric of your suit jacket as he brushes invisible dust off the shoulders. He grins at you, and your hands are shaking but you smile back, and then he pushes you good-naturedly toward the ornate wooden door that belongs to the building just to one side off the patio. 

The church is empty, guests not due for approximately half an hour yet, which gives you a good amount of time to sweat and fidget and mess up the fold in your tie. 

Luckily, the minister arrives to distract you before you decide to try and take the whole thing off and tie it again, and then the guests file in and before you know it she’s walking up the aisle.

The train of her dress flows on the ground behind her, floral-patterned net lace layered over pretty, shining white silk. She looks radiant, on the arm of a shadowy, undefined figure who must be her father. 

You’re nervous, hands shaking as the minister’s voice drones on in the background and you slide the plain gold band onto her finger. It’s nothing fancy, you could definitely afford finer stuff these days, but Ma had insisted you use hers, and she’d said it was what your father would have wanted as well.

Caroline holds her hand up to admire the ring, and then her eyes turn to meet yours, sending something electric down your spine.

And there’s still no fade out like with your earlier memories, just a vertigo-inducing slam that forces you to orient to a new picture quickly.

This one takes place in a room that you mistake for a lab initially, because it’s got the same sterile white-gray walls and tiled floor, and because of the odd contrast to the lighting. But it just takes a moment to realize it’s a hospital room - your first tip-off is that there are women here, and that sentiment definitely hasn't aged well but it’s the way things were.

You don’t think you’d been in a hospital before, or even in a doctor’s office, really.

Unable to sit still enough to warrant a seat, you find yourself pacing around the tiny, dingy waiting area. Hushed voices murmur from the other side of the door to the actual ward, but you’re not allowed in yet. 

Occasionally, you hear faint yelling. It might be her, sure, but it could be someone else, and the uncertainty does absolutely nothing to soothe your nerves.

The door opens, though, and in strides the doctor - he’s faceless in the memory, but about your height, and he clasps one of your sweaty hands in a firm handshake. 

Congratulations, he says. Both mother and baby are doing well. You feel fit to burst, grinning wildly as you lean up to try and look past the doctor and into the hallway behind him. He makes you sit down, though, and explains that apparently you still can’t go in to see them.

Why not, you want to ask, and the voice in your head puts a childlike whining inflection on the words, but you don’t dare. It’s a doctor, you can’t question his decisions, and even if he weren’t it’d still be plain rude. So you sit there, leg bouncing restlessly, hands fidgeting in your lap, until a nurse pokes her head into the waiting room and beckons you forward.

The hospital room looks exactly like the waiting area, white tiles tinged greenish by the odd lighting, with nondescript gray walls, except in here there’s a piece of blue construction paper taped to the wall next to the bed, cut into the rounded shape of a balloon and emblazoned with the words: It’s a boy!

Caroline looks exhausted (a staple of womanhood in your head), but she smiles gently when she sees you, a small bundle of blankets and the barely-visible top of a blue hat cradled in her arms.

You freeze up. You don’t mean to. 

The blanket reminds you of when you were a child and your family lost a piglet; they would always wrap its tiny body in a scrap of a sheet and cradle it in their arms like that while an equally tiny grave was made. When you were small you would sniffle and hide in your mother’s skirt, but as you grew older you formed a sort of detachment to animals in general. If you have livestock, the old saying goes, you have deadstock, too. 

There’s an unbearably long couple of seconds where your feet can’t carry you any closer, her head tilting to the side quizzically.

But then she calls your name, and the spell is broken - you rush to the bedside, one arm slipping around your wife’s shoulders as the other hand moves to push the edge of the blanket away from the baby’s face gingerly.

And damn if he isn’t just about the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

He’s got his eyes closed, sleeping already, and of course he is. Poor little fella just put up with a lot of hard work, didn’t he. The grin is back on your face in no time at all.

You’d wanted to name him Spanner if he was a boy, but your girl had her heart set on “Tate”. She looks directly at the nurse and says, “You know. Short for Tater.” with a deadpan seriousness that makes you crack up right there. 

To her credit, the nurse just shrugs and jots the name down on Tate’s birth certificate. When she hands it to you, still trying and failing to muffle your giddy laughter, she remarks: “last week there was a little girl named Chlamydia,” and you let out an unflattering snort into your palm.

You get to hold him, and even though the nurse watches you with a look on her face like she thinks she’ll have to snatch him from you at any second, it’s definitely the best experience you’ve ever had in your life. He weighs next to nothing, squirming weakly in the blanket wrapped around him. 

You’re looking at his face intently, noting the little similarities between him and you - he’s got the family nose, you recognize how it looks on a newborn from a couple of your nieces and nephews - when his eyes open. For a second you hold your breath, afraid he’ll kick off and cry, but no, he just looks up at you calmly.

“Well,” you murmur, stroking a fingertip carefully over one plump cheek, “aren’t you a bit of alright?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope i used the term minister right, I have no idea how protestants do things.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one, folks. It's got blowjobs at the end as a reward for your patience.

After that memory fades, you have to take a break.

It’s overwhelming, for a few minutes, a sudden onslaught of throat-closing, lip-quivering emotion, and by the time you get a hold of yourself - (get a hold of yourself, you’re not making any sense. It’s not your own voice in your head) - there are tear tracks on your cheeks. You wipe at your face hastily and head to the washroom.

Probably-- probably ought to bathe before company comes. Yeah.

Despite your usual efforts to avoid looking directly at your reflection, in the grand, gilded mirror, you catch a glimpse of a smear of red all down the side of your face. And that’s startling.

Upon further investigation, you find that you must have clenched your fists hard enough for the cut on your hand to split open again. A few drips of scarlet streak across your palm, and you watch as a single drop falls and hits the white marble countertop.

Unfortunately, what with all the loitering in front of the mirror you’re indulging in - and honestly, you’ve gone and spoiled yourself: with your new access to nigh unlimited warm water, you’d quickly developed a nasty habit of actually waiting for it to warm up before bathing - you make the fatal mistake of meeting your reflection’s eye.

He looks scared, you note. And sad.

Watching him warily, you shift your weight from one foot to the other slowly. He moves with you. His eyes are a dull brown, sunken deep into a face weathered by sun and time and bad living.

The mirror is cold against your fingertips, and they leave faint smudges behind as you carefully trace over the curve of his cheekbone. He holds still for you. With your index finger, you follow the line under one of his eyes, smooth over the ridge of his brow, the long sloping bridge of his nose.

There are tears in his eyes, so you try to wipe them away, but the pad of your thumb is unable to reach him through the glass. When you press your hand flat to the mirror’s surface, though, he does the same, and it’s almost like your hands are touching companionably.

‘What is it you’ve seen, friend,’ the words are right at the tip of your tongue, and somehow, you know you’ve said them countless times before. 

‘What if you could make it all go away.’

-

Warm water is one of life’s simple pleasures.

It makes the tension go out of your back, your shoulders, makes it easier to try and straighten your legs out properly. Try as you might you can’t though, not really, the muscles are locked in their position - it’s like Pa used to say: hard work never killed anyone, but it sure did make them into odd shapes.

Liquid soap, too, it’s silky in your hands and lathers like a dream.

It makes your skin soft under the stream of water, bubbles finally swirling down the drain without carrying noticeable dirt with them. Not like the first ten, fifteen times you used this shower stall, when no matter how hard you scrubbed, the suds being washed off your body had consistently been a muddy brown.

When you turn the tap off and step out, the white towel you use to dry yourself comes away clean, too. And it makes you happy. A little less ashamed, maybe, it lifts off your shoulders like a little songbird taking flight.

This time you look at your reflection on purpose. When you look into his eyes, this time, you’re struck by just how much you can see the young man from the computer screen. He’s there in the curve of the faint smile, it makes his eyes scrunch up slightly in exactly the same way.

You watch him shyly, his face flushed from the warm water. It’s a healthy flush, though, not from drinking or from anger or embarrassment, and it makes him look younger, more real. 

Your fingers twitch where you’re clutching the towel around your waist, and you lift one shoulder in a shrug-like greeting.

“--hello.”

Your voice is small, creaking, but his lips move with the word, and then his smile widens.

“I missed you.”

-

There’s a cartridge missing between number three and number four.

That’s college, a whole four years lost on you, and some of the most important ones, too. You peer into the bag and eye the shards clinking at the bottom suspiciously.

It’s, well. It’s fine. Nothing to do about it now, anyway.

You decide to just forge on ahead, see what tape five has in store for you. And after it’s run its course, then you should probably try and scrape together something decent for dinner.

-

The quality of the picture is different, when the screen flickers to life, there’s less graininess and general visual noise, the colors are brighter. There’s a little label in the bottom left corner that reads ‘12 Sept 1980’.

You settle into your chair, the sandwich you’d forced yourself to make sitting on a fancy china plate in your lap.

The memory is of you in the garage of your ranch-style house in Palo Alto, circuit boards and bits of wiring scattered around your work surface. There’s a pair of pliers in your right hand and a green-flecked drive in your left. You’re trying to splice it to another type of motor.

The garage door opens with its telltale squeak, the weather guard at the bottom dragging over the floor with a soft shushing sound, and when you look over you’re greeted by the sight of Tate poking his head into the room.

You give him a lopsided little smile, your attention split between him and all the potentially-volatile mechanisms in the garage, and he just watches you quietly, his big blue eyes shining and his sweet little mouth quirked in contemplation. His tiny hands fidget on the edge of the door.

“Where’s your mother?” you call over your shoulder.

He takes a minute to respond, glancing back into the hallway before looking up at you again. 

“Outside.”

You nod in acknowledgement, hunching down slightly as you try to thread the frayed end of a wrapped wire through a much-too-small metal loop. “Mm. Don’t she need your help?”

“..no.”

Tate fidgets some more, shuffling in place, small fingers curling and uncurling around the door handle.

The obvious lie gets a dry laugh out of you. 

And heck, the wire isn’t wanting to go through right now, so instead of pursuing more frustration with it you set the whole thing down and gesture for him to come in. The wooden chair squeaks against the concrete floor as you turn it without bothering to stand up, and you pat your leg in an invitation.

Tate breaks into a bright grin and scrambles into the garage, the door slamming heavily shut behind him. He crawls up into your lap and immediately turns his eyes to the various odds and ends scattered across your desk.

“Are you building a computer?” he asks in that little voice, “Mamma said that’s what you do in here all day.”

You nod, chin resting atop his head, and reach around him to pick up a stray floppy disc to show him.

“Yup. See here, this is one of the parts that goes on the inside. It’s the bit that holds all the memories, kinda like the computer’s brain.”

He looks at the disc curiously, reaching out to grab it from you, and you let him. He brings it into his lap, holding it as carefully as a four year old possibly can, and after a moment he turns to look up at you over his shoulder in awe.

“Daddy,” he says, and you hum softly in response.

“Will you come and throw the ball with me?”

The question catches you off guard, you had expected him to make a declaration about you, or technology, or your proficiency with technology, but you lift him off of your lap and set him back on the floor with a fond chuckle. When you tousle his hair, he makes an annoyed sound and squirms away out of reach.

“I’ll come play later, Tater-tot, alright? Promise.”

Tate sighs, nodding slowly, and sets the drive back on one corner of your desk before turning to leave.

You smile to yourself as you turn back to your work, shaking your head slightly in exasperation.

The picture snuffs out like a candle, and there’s a long pause wherein you avoid your reflection’s gaze on the screen. The date in the next memory, when it boots up, is ‘09 Mar 1981’.

You’ve got everything you need to head up north - enough clothes for a week, seven shirts neatly ironed and two pairs of pants that you can alternate. A field notebook and your set of fancy pens from the stationery store in San Francisco are tucked right up next to your toiletries. Your pet project, the most advanced prototype of your personal computer to date, and the cartridge for Russian Square Game are packed in there too, along with a three-tile Rubik’s cube.

The prospect of taking a bus all the way up the Pacific coast in a ten-hour trek where you have little to no control over your surroundings isn’t a great one. 

You don’t like public transportation in general, it’s always nerve-wracking to be that close to so many strangers, and today isn’t a good day for it by any means. To top it off, that morning you had gotten a phone call bearing bad news: your nephew, Massey Ferguson McGucket, had died in an auto accident. His friend’s car was found halfway up a tree off of the freeway. Your brother (Maltomeal, you recall suddenly, Tommy) was near inconsolable.

Your ticket is wrinkled and kind of damp from being clutched in your hand for so long by the time you hand it to the bus driver. He doesn’t react, though, just punches it and hands it back to you, and you head right for the back of the vehicle. 

Bob Dylan’s ‘Tambourine Man’ blasts tinny and too-loud from the speaker by the back row, but you sit there anyway. Everyone else stays up by the front. The crowd is a mass of plaid shirts and handbags inside the memory, loggers heading up north for the spring season and what must be a gaggle of dock worker’s wives.

The ride is quiet, you cross and uncross your legs in the back seat every minute or so, looking intently out the window and watching the scenery change from the rolling hills and beachy blue skies of central California to the misty, thickly-wooded mountains of southern Oregon. When you’re nearly to your destination (middle of nowhere, Central Oregon), your stomach does a funny little flip. John Denver’s voice starts to eke out of the speaker, which doesn’t help your sudden onset nausea at all, and you start to feel like your heart is climbing up your throat. 

You decide to try and soothe your mounting, acute nervousness by taking out your notebook and jotting down a few notes.

‘Expected to see in Oregon’, your page gets labeled, and you think for a moment before writing down, ‘fishing imagery - yellow raincoat. Bigfoot sighting claims. General wetness’.

The image freezes just as you’re climbing down out of the bus when it finally reaches the station, and there’s the sound of a tape rewinding as the memory recalibrates itself.

You recognize the new setting from your own life, which. It’s. It’s not quite like looking at someone else’s memories anymore, and it strikes a sort of dissonance within you. You know this kitchen, had sat at that table not even a week ago.

Of course, in the memory it’s a younger house, unkempt in a different way than it was last week - instead of general clutter like cups and shoes, there are papers and jars littered around. The window above the sink is open, the sunset light filtering in through the tall pines outside.

Speaking of.

Stanford hugs you crushingly tight to his chest, his arms tucked tightly around your waist so that you have no choice but to slide your own around his shoulders, patting lightly at his back. He pulls away, hands going to your upper arms, and holds you at arm’s length to look you over. 

It seems like he’s checking you for damage or some such, because there’s a look of relief on his face when he appears to assess that you’re largely unchanged from the last time you saw each other. His hands drop to your waist again once he’s satisfied, and he tugs you in for another brief but solid embrace.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into your hair, and you roll your eyes and push at him halfheartedly.

You don’t actually want him to let go.

His hands feel nice on your waist, and when they move even lower to wrap around your hips, it feels even better. A thrill goes through your stomach, equal parts elation and squirming discomfort. There’s a certain line of acceptability, there, and luckily he realizes he’s crossed it immediately. His hands quickly move to touch your upper back, before he steps back and clears his throat, reaching up to rub at his nose.

“It’s good to see you,” you say softly, reaching up to straighten your glasses on your face, and he nods.

“Yes, yes. I- thank you, for coming.”

“‘Course. I couldn’t have you buildin’ the world’s first competitor to the particle collider and stand idly by, could I?”

His eyes light up, and he flashes you a thousand-watt smile. “I’m so excited for you to see it. I have a projected progress report written up, and if you can triple-check my calculations I’ll be able to get a time frame for its completion.”

You nod earnestly, reaching into your bag to grab the notebook and pens. “Yeah, alright. I don’t s’pose I could get you to let me take you out to dinner first, though?”

His expression turns pensive, for a moment, and he shakes his head in the negative, “no, no, you’re my guest, I should be buying.”

You raise your eyebrows, pursing your lips slightly, and cross your arms over your chest. “Let’s not turn this into a stalemate situation, Stanford. I’ve got southern hospitality culture on my side. What’ve you got? Bein’ Italian?”

“I’m not Italian,” he mutters, but he nods in acquiescence. “Fine, I.. I guess it won’t hurt. It’ll be my treat next time.”

The diner is a kitschy little thing about ten minutes down the pitch-black dirt road, an all-American type of place that serves breakfast food well into the night. 

The menu is handwritten and there are either one or two employees manning the entire operation. It’s a far cry from what you’d gotten used to in the Bay Area. 

You order some kind of nondescript hamburger, and Stanford opts for one of the pancake plates.

“So you’re really not Italian?” you ask between bites, watching as the yellowish mystery sauce mixture drips from the lettuce in your burger onto the plate below.

Stanford, who had just taken a rather large bite, shakes his head, one hand moving to cover his mouth as he answers, “no. Everyone thinks so, coming from New Jersey, but we’re not. My mother’s family was Russian, and Pop..” He shrugs, shaking his head minutely, and swallows before lowering his hand again. “I always liked to think he came from a small place in Hell.”

“Mm,” you nod in false understanding, humming and motioning for him to give you a moment. Your voice is slightly muffled when you respond, sagely, “Belfast.”

He cracks a smile, then genuinely laughs, rolling his eyes exasperatedly as he pushes his food over to one side of his plate. “Yeah, maybe,” he says, and nudges your foot with his own under the table. 

It’s an absurdly affectionate gesture, but it’s one you return without even thinking.

You find yourself leaning toward the computer screen when the scene cuts to black, your heart fluttering oddly in your chest. 

The next image is dark, though, poorly-lit and murky, and it makes that happy fluttering turn to much more familiar apprehensive palpitations in an instant.

You’re in his bedroom.

The two of you, you’re both in his bedroom.

He’s got his shirt off, and he has one hand cradling your cheek as he presses you to the closed wooden door. His eyes are closed behind his glasses, the frames of which clink gently against your own as his lips push against yours.

It’s wet, messy, your mouths are both spit-slick and warm, sliding over each other hurried and uncoordinated. He’s breathing heavily through his nose, the occasional low groan escaping him, and you have a drowning grip on the belt loops at either side of his waist. 

He draws your lower lip into his mouth, nips at it playfully, and you make a sound that’s embarrassingly close to a whimper, tugging his hips in flush to your body.

He pulls back and your mouths disconnect with a soft, wet sound, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. You watch the movement with heavy-lidded eyes, leaning your head back against the door. He takes the opportunity to lean down and press a sucking kiss to the column of your throat, then another just under your jaw, and you hum your approval, eyes fluttering shut.

When he straightens up you can see that his eyes are dilated near black, only a thin ring of blue around blown pupils, and you reach up to run your sweaty fingers through his thick, dark hair.

“Come on,” he whispers, the hand on your cheek dropping to your shoulder, then sliding sensually down the length of your arm until his hand is curled around your wrist. 

The touch makes your skin tingle, and you clench your hand into a fist and tug just to feel his grip tighten - the way he nearly growls and pulls you in closer to his body at your halfhearted attempt at breaking free makes something pool hotly in your belly.

“Come on,” he pleads, grasping the collar of your shirt between the finger and thumb of his free hand, “take it off.”

He’s still got a hold of your right hand, so you make do with only your left, fingers shaking as you wrestle with your shirt buttons.

He watches hungrily, though, as little by little your body is revealed, and as soon as your shirt drops to the floor his hands are on your waist, spanning your ribs, smoothing upward over your back. His touch is all-consuming as he draws you in again, and as your bare chest touches his own, you feel electric sparks shooting downward. You’re achingly hard already.

When he kisses you again, his hand tangles in the hair at the back of your head, and as he flexes his fingers it feels good, the sweet sharp pain dulling into heady pleasure.

Then your vision tilts and you’re suddenly laid out under him atop his blankets, one of his knees between your thighs. 

His hands are both on your wrists for a few seconds, pushing them firmly down against the mattress, and you squirm weakly against his hold again - not to actually get away, no, only to feel the pressure increase, to watch the possession darken his expression briefly. You look up at him with wide eyes, lips parted just so, playing into the role some more.

With one more, harder squeeze to your wrists, he sits back on his heels. 

Unceremoniously, he reaches down and presses the heel of his hand to the bulge at his fly, drawing in a sharp breath at the pressure, no doubt a relief. His hips roll against his own touch, his head tilting back a little, and he lets out a breathy groan before he actually unzips the front of his pants and hastily pushes them down. 

They don’t go far, only to about his knees because of his position, but it’s enough. Your eyes are drawn down the line of his chest and stomach, dark curls leading your eye downward still from his navel, and the sight of his cock standing at attention makes you inhale in anticipation.

When you manage to tear your eyes away and look at him again, he’s got this look on his face like you’re the only person in the world, to him, and that look makes color rise to your cheeks. There’s a warm fluttering in your belly, distinct and separate from the burning lust.

He reaches down, touches the side of your face gently, his thumb brushing over your lower lip. 

His fingertips ghost downward, then, over your throat, which makes you gasp, and then over your chest and down your stomach. You suck in your belly when he trails his fingers across it, ticklish, and he huffs a soft laugh.

“You’re so..” he murmurs, finally, finally reaching for the button of your pants. You feel fit to tear the seam of your fly. As he slowly pulls the zipper down, even that slight vibration leaving you flat out with need, he mulls over what it is he’s trying to say. “I missed this,” he settles on eventually, his hand slipping through the y-front of your briefs like it’s nothing, “missed you.”

He curls his fingers around your shaft and you make a reedy little sound - a groan caught on an inhale, and now words are spilling out of your mouth unbidden.

“Me too, I mean, I wanted to- to see you,” he gives your cock an encouraging squeeze and you clench your eyes shut, head tipping back. “Ah, ah- I couldn’t hardly wait.”

There’s a blur of movement, Stanford shuffles down the bed, and when his hand leaves you you let out a disappointed whine. 

He’d moved so that he could pull your pants down and off, though, so you suppose you forgive him, and you definitely forgive him when he leans down and takes the head of your cock into his mouth.

Your hands fly to hold him in place, clutching fistfuls of his dark hair, and you turn your head agitatedly from one side to the other against the pillow.

He suckles just at the tip gently, laving the flat of his tongue over the slit, and your hips twitch up minutely. His hands wrap back around your hips like they belong there, the crests of your hip bones fitting snugly in his palms, his fingertips pressing lightly on either side of your spine. 

It’s not until you’re whining quietly, legs shaking from the teasing that borders on overstimulation while at the same time not being nearly enough, that he exhales heavily and takes the rest of you into his mouth in one swift motion. Your back arches up off the mattress, knees bending to bracket his body, and you let out a sharp cry that’s followed by a reverent whisper of his name.

He hums quietly, the tip of his nose brushing against your lower belly, and the vibration goes straight through you. Groaning breathlessly, you hazard a glance down at him and find him looking right back at you - and then his fingers flex on your hips, and his throat constricts as he swallows around your length.

Your fingers tug on his hair, probably too hard, as he relaxes the muscles of his throat and then swallows again, the undulating pressure making your hips strain against his hold. He’s still looking directly at you, and you’re spellbound, couldn’t break eye contact if you wanted to. It borders on too much, somehow too dirty, too intimate. 

But somehow, instead of making you flush and try to retreat into yourself with shame, it makes you come - although your mouth is hanging open it’s nearly silent, your breath hitching and coming out in heavy shudders, your eyes locked on his.

He draws away, your softening cock slipping out of his mouth, but he presses a soft kiss to the oversensitive shaft before sitting up again properly. The tiny brush of lips makes you hiss quietly, one leg twitching, and you’re the one to finally look away.

Returning the favor is only polite, so within the next thirty seconds you find yourself knelt on the floor between his knees as he sits at the edge of the bed, carefully pulling his pants off the rest of the way.

There’s something soft in his eyes as he watches you, a small smile on his lips, and he reaches down to cup your jaw as you hesitate, out of practice and unsure how to start.

He draws in a shaky breath as you lean forward, pressing your mouth to the side of his shaft like he’d done to you. It’s messier than you’d like, as you flatten your tongue against him and lick a broad stripe upward toward the head, your spit somehow already smeared over your own cheek.

He lets out a soft “oh,” as you shift your stance and start to take him into your mouth properly, and if you can only fit about two thirds of the length in before you gag he doesn’t seem to care. You close your eyes and it becomes slightly easier to focus that way, bob your head and press your tongue flat to the underside of his cock, and he exhales a breathy curse before murmuring, like a prayer, “I love you.”

Those words fill your head with cotton batting, your chest tightening and the butterflies in your stomach kicking back to life with a roaring vengeance. You just continue to move, his hand carding through your hair, and when he spills into your mouth you jerk away in surprise, his seed dribbling down out of your open mouth and getting on the floor.

His thumb swipes a glob of it off your chin and pushes it past your lips, and you can’t say you enjoy the taste, or the texture, but the gesture makes a thrill go through you. Feeling bold, you glance up at him, and he’s looking down at you with a heated intensity you’d never seen before - not even when he found a solution to a new equation after four days of sleepless mental exertion.

There’s a soft pop when he draws his thumb out of your mouth, drawing a damp line over your skin as he brushes the pad of the digit over your cheek tenderly. “I mean it, I really do, I love you,” he murmurs, and you just look up at him mutely.

“It’s okay, if you can’t say it back,” his adoring expression melts into a regular old fond smile, then, and he shrugs lightly, “just, know it’s true. Okay?”

Later that same night, when Stanford’s tucked up under the blankets and safely asleep, you slip down from beside him to kneel on the floor again. 

This time, the hardwood is cold against your skin, and you grimace as you fold your hands together, elbows propped on the side of the bed.

You lean your head down, forehead resting against your intertwined fingers, and begin to whimper out under your breath: 

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee..”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [squints at “Massey Ferguson”] what the fuck [writes “Maltomeal” on the next line] 
> 
> it’s very hard to name OC members for this family i mean the guy named his kid Potato.


End file.
